Charge Your Phone in 30 Seconds? An Israeli Firm Says It Can

StoreDot Ltd., a Tel-Aviv based start-up, says it hopes to at least make the charging process faster--unveiling Monday a prototype charger that promises to take your battery from a tiny sliver of red to 100%, all in about 30 seconds. See the company's demo video here.

StoreDot was born out of the nanotechnology department at Tel Aviv University and developed its prototype for Samsung's Galaxy 4. It unveiled the device at Microsoft Think Next conference in Tel Aviv. StoreDot says it plans to make chargers for other smartphones, too.

The prototype charger is currently the size of a laptop charger, but the company says it has a parallel engineering effort aimed at reducing its size. The estimated cost will be twice that of an average phone charger, which is up to $30. StoreDot says commercial production in planned for late 2016.